As children grow older, they tend to ask a lot of questions and want to know everything. How should sex education be given to children?
In some cases, parents do not know how to answer their children's questions. In particular, they can get stuck on their children's sexual questions. Experts explained in our article how to give sexual education to children, how to answer the sexuality questions posed by the child.
For the vigorous development of children both spiritually and physically, it is one of the most powerful areas in our society where it is still natural to talk about sexuality, especially for families to answer sexual questions in the most accurate way and with the most appropriate method. Üsküdar University founding rector Psychiatrist Prof. Dr. Nevzat Tarhan, while giving advice on how to answer the questions that children ask their families about sexuality, mentioned that honest answers should be given in an age-appropriate way.
"In order to determine an honest sexual education, the child should be taught about intimate areas. Harassment incidents can be prevented with sincere method education."
CONTACT YOUR CHILD LIKE THIS
Prof. Dr. Tarhan emphasizes that providing sexual education to children is important for raising healthy and happy individuals in the future, and underlines the need to provide sexual education to children in order to prevent sexual abuse.
HARASSMENT CAN BE PREVENTED WITH EDUCATION
Prof. Dr. Nevzat Tarhan's advice to parents is as follows:
When patients who have to receive psychological support for reasons directed to different areas in adulthood are examined, it is seen that a significant number of these people have experienced various sexual traumas in their childhood and have been harassed. It is possible to prevent this kind of harassment by providing sexual education to the child. A child who is made aware of sexuality knows that in the event of possible harassment, it is obviously not an innocent situation and can make adults aware of the situation.
Sexual education and sexual freedom and, incidentally, sexuality must of course be kept completely separate from each other. If a child is not properly educated on any subject, he or she may acquire hearsay and false information about that subject. This has even greater drawbacks. The child may play a sexual game with a child who is only a few years older than him/her, may feel a sense of enjoyment during the game without realizing what he/she is doing, and then the game may lead to sexual harassment. Therefore, the child should be given sexual education appropriate to his/her age. If sexuality remains a taboo for the child over and over again, other problems may arise in later years; for example, if it is a girl, she may suffer from vaginusmus and have problems in her marriage.
SEXUAL EDUCATION UP TO AGE
The concepts of sexuality to be taught to a preschool child are different from the concepts to be taught to a school-age or puberty-age child. Preschool children generally have not developed a sense of reality. At this age, parents often panic when they see many sexual acts. For the child, however, this is not a sexual act, but something new and other. Seeing the parents panic, the child begins to find the act more strange and continues to do it. If the primary reaction of the parents is not to panic, if the parents manage to remain neutral and divert the child's attention to other areas, the child will stop this behavior after a while.
PRIVACY SHOULD BE TAUGHT
In order to establish honest sex education, children must be taught about their private areas. If a school-age child walks around the house naked, it is not possible to teach him/her what is private. From an early age, attention should be paid to the clothes the child wears, a sense of privacy should be instilled, and boundaries should be taught.
GENDER SHOULD BE TREATED ACCORDING TO GENDER
While providing sexual education, children should also be helped to gain an honest sexual identity. Sometimes mothers unknowingly raise boys in girls' clothes, while their sisters and aunts raise them in their midst. The whole community loves the child in this state, they play with him, they make him a drag queen. However, when the child grows up, he starts to exhibit effeminate behavior. This is a result of parents teaching sexual identity to the child incorrectly. Parents who do not want to have problems in the future should take care to treat their children according to their gender.
QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ANSWERED
One of the things children are most curious about is how they came into the world. When the child asks this question, as if explaining it to an older person, he says, "They say that storks bring children, but that is not sincere.
It is nice that you ask this question, that you are curious, that you give it weight.
Sexuality is a very special situation between a man and a woman. But you need to grow up a little more to learn the details. I will tell you when you grow up". Therefore, the child is not lied to about this subject.
When the subject is explained in adolescence, it is necessary to adapt that sexuality has a meaningful place in human life and that it should be experienced with a special and significant person, and that this person should be one's life partner, that is, one's spouse.
The child's sense of curiosity and wonder are two key emotions in learning. When providing sex education, care should be taken not to arouse the child's curiosity and amazement. If the child is given answers that arouse curiosity and amazement about sexuality, the child starts to be interested in that area.
The drawbacks of not informing the child about sexuality should not be ignored. The child may somehow learn about this subject he/she is curious about either from his/her friends or from the internet with false and hearsay information. Moreover, leaving the child's questions unanswered by the parents reduces the child's capacity to ask questions, and this door should not be closed.
A child who asks always learns life more simply and finds solutions to problems more easily. The question asked may be wrong, but the child will learn to ask honest questions by asking the wrong questions, just as he/she learned to walk by falling down. For this reason, it would be appropriate to assign answers to the child's questions without scolding or rebuking him/her and without destroying his/her sense of curiosity, and if there is no answer to be given at that moment, to invite the child to "Let me research and answer this subject" and to actually research, think and determine an answer.
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